Queen Victoria eBook

oft Osborne. It was indeed a model Court.
Not only were its central personages the patterns
of propriety, but no breath of scandal, no shadow of
indecorum, might approach its utmost boundaries.
For Victoria, with all the zeal of a convert, upheld
now the standard of moral purity with an inflexibility
surpassing, if that were possible, Albert’s own.
She blushed to think how she had once believed—­how
she had once actually told him—­that
one might be too strict and particular in such matters,
and that one ought to be indulgent towards other people’s
dreadful sins. But she was no longer Lord M’s
pupil: she was Albert’s wife. She was
more—­the embodiment, the living apex of
a new era in the generations of mankind. The
last vestige of the eighteenth century had disappeared;
cynicism and subtlety were shrivelled into powder;
and duty, industry, morality, and domesticity triumphed
over them. Even the very chairs and tables had
assumed, with a singular responsiveness, the forms
of prim solidity. The Victorian Age was in full
swing.

VII

Only one thing more was needed: material expression
must be given to the new ideals and the new forces
so that they might stand revealed, in visible glory,
before the eyes of an astonished world. It was
for Albert to supply this want. He mused, and
was inspired: the Great Exhibition came into
his head.

Without consulting anyone, he thought out the details
of his conception with the minutest care. There
had been exhibitions before in the world, but this
should surpass them all. It should contain specimens
of what every country could produce in raw materials,
in machinery and mechanical inventions, in manufactures,
and in the applied and plastic arts. It should
not be merely useful and ornamental; it should teach
a high moral lesson. It should be an international
monument to those supreme blessings of civilisation—­peace,
progress, and prosperity. For some time past
the Prince had been devoting much of his attention
to the problems of commerce and industry. He
had a taste for machinery of every kind, and his sharp
eye had more than once detected, with the precision
of an expert, a missing cog-wheel in some vast and
complicated engine. A visit to Liverpool, where
he opened the Albert Dock, impressed upon his mind
the immensity of modern industrial forces, though in
a letter to Victoria describing his experiences, he
was careful to retain his customary lightness of touch.
“As I write,” he playfully remarked, “you
will be making your evening toilette, and not be ready
in time for dinner. I must set about the same
task, and not, let me hope, with the same result...
The loyalty and enthusiasm of the inhabitants are great;
but the heat is greater still. I am satisfied
that if the population of Liverpool had been weighed
this morning, and were to be weighed again now, they
would be found many degrees lighter. The docks